Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

UFT's Fake History - Denies Responsibility for Creating ATR Pool

How did the ATR pool come to be?

The
ATR pool — a reserve pool of teachers working as substitutes but
without permanent assignments — was a personnel policy devised by the
Bloomberg administration that was poorly designed and never effectively
implemented, particularly after the pool expanded in the wake of school
closings during the Bloomberg years. As the school-closing mania has
receded, the size of the pool has diminished.... from UFT website, http://www.uft.org/press-releases/atr-qa

Jeff Kaufman posted on ICE(the caucus) -News.UFT had nothing to do with creating the ATR pool!?!
Before you read the UFT press release on ATRs, I though a review of the blogs Jeff published on the ICE blog in October 2005 would give you a good sense of what was going on in real time.
In reverse order - read from bottom up.

The
recent Department of Education announcement about assigning teachers
from the ATR pool to schools on a more permanent basis has awakened the
usual opposition from the "school reform" crowd.

Below is a Q&A designed to provide accurate information to those who have questions about the issue.

"Teachers
in the ATR pool are a valuable resource for the system and provide
needed services to schools." —UFT President Michael Mulgrew

How did the ATR pool come to be?

The
ATR pool — a reserve pool of teachers working as substitutes but
without permanent assignments — was a personnel policy devised by the
Bloomberg administration that was poorly designed and never effectively
implemented, particularly after the pool expanded in the wake of school
closings during the Bloomberg years. As the school-closing mania has
receded, the size of the pool has diminished.

How do teachers end up in the pool?

Most
of the teachers in the pool are there because their schools or their
programs closed; a minority have been the subject of some kind of
disciplinary action, though that action may have led only to a brief
suspension or a fine of a few hundred dollars. The overwhelming majority
of teachers in the ATR pool have received positive evaluations
(Effective, Highly Effective or, for those rated under the previous
system, Satisfactory).

How does the program now work?

ATR
teachers are in the schools every day. Some get longer assignments, but
many rotate among schools on a monthly basis, filling in for teachers
who are sick or on some kind of leave.

Do the ATRs cost principals money?

ATRs
on rotating assignments save the school system the cost of hiring a
substitute. The Department of Education has created a number of
financial incentives for principals to encourage them to hire ATRs on a
more permanent basis, but the fact is that an ATR's salary constitutes a
tiny percentage of a building's total teacher payroll, which for even a
small school can exceed $3 million annually.

How will the new program work?

A
number of ATRs will be assigned (in license) to schools ONLY where the
principal has been unable to fill an open position. Without the presence
of such an ATR, students would be faced with occasional and expensive
part-time substitutes or a group of ATR teachers rotating in and out
every month.

Mr. Mulgrew told the New York Times, “What we’re trying to do is give a more stable educational environment for the students.”

An
ATR in this type of provisional assignment will become part of the
school's regular faculty the next year if the teacher is rated Effective
or Highly Effective.

What if the ATR and the principal don't see eye-to-eye?

To
quote from the recent agreement with the DOE : "...AT ANY TIME [caps
added] after a provisional assignment is made a principal can request
the removal of the ATR from this assignment and the ATR can be returned
to the ATR pool..."

What is the role of the disciplinary process?

Under
state law, tenured teachers are guaranteed due process, including a
hearing before an independent arbitrator, if they have been accused of
some kind of misbehavior. Many disciplinary case brought by the
Department of Education are not serious enough to justify a teacher
being terminated. Cases are often resolved, either by an agreement or by
an arbitrator’s decisions, with a fine or a suspension. Fines can be as
little as $250, and suspensions as brief as one week. But even penalties like these can land a teacher in the ATR pool under current DOE practice.

Comments are welcome. Irrelevant and abusive comments will be deleted, as will all commercial links. Comment moderation is on, so if your comment does not appear it is because I have not been at my computer (I do not do cell phone moderating).

UFT Election Vote Comparison: 2004-10

A Personal Historical Perspective

Why Karen Lewis Reads Ed Notes

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Hedges says, There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history.

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

GEM's Julie Cavanagh Debates E4E member on NY1 on LIFO and Seniority

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy TysonProfessor of African American Studies and HistoryDuke University

A Familiar Voice on Unions

"We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike"- Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Outsource our children

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping by Norm Scott

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

From Sharon Higgins

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Video of Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shredding Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model

Great Post on Teacher Quality at the Morton School

I'm very tired of the myth that schools are bursting at the seams with apathetic, unskilled, surly, child-hating losers who can't get jobs doing anything else. I recently figured that, counting high school and college where one encounters many teachers in the course of a year, I had well over 100 teachers in my lifetime, and I can only say that one or two truly had no place being in a classroom.